Quote

Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.

Alice Miller

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Alice Miller
Age: 87 †
Born: 1923
Born: January 12
Died: 2010
Died: April 14
Painter
Psychologist
Sociologist
Writer
Piotrkow Trybunalski
Situation
Searching
Child
Hopeless
Persons
Sudden
Person
Desperate
Prehistory
Children
Strikes
Sadism
Long
Fantasy
Originates
Way
Childhood
Infectious
Always
Disease
Fantasies

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Genuine feelings are never the product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent.
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What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.
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The results of any traumatic experience, such as abuse, can only be resolved by experiencing, articulating, and judging every facet of the original experience within a process of careful therapeutic disclosure.
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One of the best ways of keeping your temper in an argument, as most of us know only too well, is not to listen to anything the other person has to say.
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Emotional access to the truth is the indispensable precondition of healing.
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The free expression of resentment against one's parents represents a great opportunity. It provides access to one's true self, reactivates numbed feelings, opens the way for mourning and - with luck - reconciliation.
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The art of not experiencing feelings. A child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress emotions.
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Clinging uncritically to traditional ideas and beliefs often serves to obscure or deny real facts of our life history.
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Society chooses to disregard the mistreatment of children, judging it to be altogether normal because it is so commonplace.
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The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.
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Disrespect is the weapon of the weak
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The grandiose person is never really free first because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail.
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Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery and emotional acceptance of the truth in the individual and unique history of our childhood.
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Child abuse damages a person for life and that damage is in no way diminished by the ignorance of the perpetrator. It is only with the uncovering of the complete truth as it affects all those involved that a genuinely viable solution can be found to the dangers of child abuse.
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Parents are indeed capable of routinely torturing their children without anyone interceding.
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Depression leads him close to his wounds, but only the mourning for what he has missed, missed at the crucial time, can lead to real healing.
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Without realizing that the past is constantly determining their present actions, they avoid learning anything about their history. They continue to live in their repressed childhood situation, ignoring the fact that is no longer exists, continuing to fear and avoid dangers that, although once real, have not been real for a long time.
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Problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience.
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Today I should not be identified with any kind of regressive therapy.
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We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.
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